A Glimpse into my Life.

So I made Gluten Free pie crust Monday night. We wanted quiche for dinner, and I figured it was as good a time as any to try out a pie crust.

I didn't think to get pictures since I was watching my friend's children while she was busy bringing their newest little child into the world. We had a crazy, busy day, with lots of playing, running, dancing, singing, roughhousing, and fun. Thankfully the new little one is here, although she was born with pneumonia so she is in the NICU while they figure out which type she has. The hospital in Provo said with all the babies they have each year, the cases of babies born with Pneumonia is 10 babies per year! The little lady is doing okay though. Her vitals are good, it will just take time.

Now on to pie crust. I used King Arthur Flour's Gluten Free Pie Crust and made a few modifications to it. I'd never used this recipe before, but I try not to use xanthan gum or guar gum when I make things at home. I was reasoning since those are two modern inventions and I am not totally sold on the need for them nor the healthy use of them yet, I would look for a realistic substitute.** On Gluten Free Girl they talk about using ground flax seed or ground chia seed as substitutes for the gums and I've been trying the flax seed in my from scratch recipes.

So my modifications were:

• I used the directions for the brown rice flour mix that is on the King Arthur site. I haven't felt the need to buy their pre-packaged baking flour mix yet.
• I forgot to pre-mix my wet ingredients and whisk them all together until they were frothy. (That happens when you are chasing extra kidlets!)
• I used flax seed instead of the gum, but this time on a whim, I decided to double the flax seed and see what would happen.
• I only chilled the dough for an hour, I think a few hours would be preferable.
  

Hubby tasted tested the crust first. He said it was great for a first attempt and not bad in comparison to the normal crusts I make. I think it cooked a little long, but it needed to so the quiche would be cooked. The crust under the quiche was lovely though. I guess that means I'll have to adapt the quiche filling to be a bit less wet. It was a little dry on the parts that were above the quiche, but had a nice flavor overall.

I'm glad this wasn't as difficult as it mentally seemed. There is some work to be done on it,but hey, I think it'll end up being almost as easy as normal pie crust!

** I just need to research the gums more, plus the cost of them is fairly expensive for a bag even though you don't use much of them and since the startup cost of switching our foods is semi expensive while we figure this out, I didn't want to buy one more thing that I didn't absolutely need to. I may decide I need them in the future, but right now things are in a workable, okay state without them.

I miss the days of easy baking. Grab a bit of this, a bit of that, throw it together and more often than not, you have something good. I love to tinker with cookie recipes, fiddle with cakes, play with bread dough. Now, it's a lot harder and suddenly I have to motivate myself to cook ANYTHING, let alone any sort of breads. I have to think about things differently. Thank goodness for friends and the internet to find new ways to go about baking. These biscuits are from Pamela's Products, and it is made with her Baking Mix. I hate having to rely on a mix, since we normally make most our stuff from scratch, but since I feel like I am about 8 years old and learning the finer points of baking again, it helps. The goal is to eventually get back to cooking from scratch, but in the mean time, I can use the Baking Mix and get something that looks mostly like it should and frees up time with learning to cook gluten free.



It's been a huge adjustment to think that my doughs should be batter consistency, my cakes will not rise any higher once I pour them into the pan, and the only way to make something fluffy is to beat it longer to whip air into it.



Having said that, these biscuits were a huge hit. They are fluffy, almost too fluffy. They break apart easier than I think biscuits should, and they definitely have a whole grain type taste to them. But, the kids love them, they are easy to make, and it satisfies the request to have bread/rolls/something with meals.



Until I get things under control in the cooking department, they are a great standby. The mix smells heavenly when you open the bag, I've used it for chocolate chip cookies and pancakes in addition to the biscuits and so far things are looking up!

So, we tried making oatmeal cookies the other day because Little Miss was dying for a treat we had no suitable treats for her and Dutch's new diet. It was interesting to say the least. From the reading I've done, some say you can substitute straight across if you do it by weight not the volume, some say it'll never be the same, some say you have to really tinker with the recipe. Since the answers were so mixed, I decided to take my recipe, weigh out the amount of regular flour, and substitute it with gluten free flour.

The mixing it up part looked the same.



They started to look a wee bit different as they baked up. If I took them right off the baking sheet, they 'melted' through the cooling rack and fell apart into a lacey, holly mess. Yes, I know you see a stack of cookie mess, but that was after we realized there was no hope for them to hold their shape and I needed somewhere to put the hot mess.



If I left them on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, they glued themselves to the pan.



In the end, they made a fabulous granola, and I'll have to get back to the drawing board. The kids enjoyed eating the granola, even if it wasn't what we were expecting.




Looking at the granola, maybe we'll have to make it again for a snack with some fruit!

Rynie decided he wanted to make some bread today. I couldn't find the recipe that Aunt K gave me that we really like, so we just did the dough recipe with the bread machine. Not doing that recipe again!!!! First off, the dough was crumbly in spots, so I had to mix more water into it to make it feel like dough. The consistency was really odd, a silly putty consistency, and it wouldn't beat down or anything. I tried to knead it and it wouldn't. Then Rynie wanted to have a go at it. He took a rolling pin to it and whacked it for a while. We had some rather um, lumpy things and he wanted to put them on a baking tray instead of in a pan. I put them in the oven and hoped for the best. This is what it looked like going in:

Here is the 'bread' once we got it done. No idea how long it took to cook because I didn't time it. I just left it in there until it was golden brown.

The proud little chef Rynie with his bread!

Guess what folks! This bread is actually edible. Oh, don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of better bread, but it was bread consistency inside, crisp (read really hard) on the outside, and although it was lacking on the flavor, once you dunked it in your soup, it was like putting croutons in it.

All in all, even though it wasn't a great bread, my little guy got to learn about making bread.- He also did a ton of dishes by hand and helped make soup because he wanted to be a Helper Guy!